As a Rails developer, you’ll be expected to both support and maintain existing client web applications, as well as develop brand new web applications alongside other senior developers. You’ll be expected to work across front and back-end code and as such knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript is required.

Be quick to grasp concepts. We work with an eclectic mix of startup and established businesses from a variety of backgrounds and industries. Being able to quickly understand and appreciate a client’s needs is critical.

Please note, this job role is based at our offices in central Bath. As such, we’re not accepting applications for remote working.

Categorically no agencies / recruiters.

]]>https://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/blog/announcements/were-hiring-ruby-on-rails-developers/feed/0Best UX in the West!https://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/blog/news/best-ux-in-the-west/
https://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/blog/news/best-ux-in-the-west/#respondThu, 18 Feb 2016 12:16:44 +0000https://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/?p=3422 Read More »]]>We are delighted to have won the Best Use of UX Design at The SPARKies 2016. The awards celebrate the best tech in the west and were held last night at a packed Bierkeller in Bristol.

We were shortlisted for our work reimagining the VoIP control panel for Bath based Internet services provider Gradwell.

Almost a decade of developer lead design had to be stripped away and replaced with slick, user-centric workflows covering dozens of services, hundreds of screens and thousands of states/permutations. To increase the challenge further, the project ran across only 8 weeks.

In that short time we produced wireframes, a new visual language, a CSS/HTML toolkit and full fidelity examples of all key pages. We ran multiple user testing sessions with Gradwell customers and staff to verify the usability of our designs at stage.

Gradwell CEO, Nick Thompson commented: “Storm approached our Control Panel project with energy, expertise and effectiveness showing a willingness to challenge our preconceptions, proactively communicating with us on progress and delivering to a higher standard than I had dared to hope for.”

The judges were impressed with our attention to detail, the quality and versatility of the toolkit we produced, and that we delivered that standard of work in such a short period of time.

We’d also like to say a massive congratulations to our client, Keymailer, who won Best Innovation in Digital Entertainment. Having built their MVP we’re thrilled to see them going on to great things!

Emily studied illustration at Falmouth University in Cornwall. Since then she’s worked as a traditional and digital illustrator and enjoys everything from intricate drawings to large scale public murals – she even painted 3 of Bristol’s Wow! Gorillas. Emily has been delivering fantastic creative web and app based user experiences since 2009 and we’re thrilled to have her onboard! We’re sure you’re going to love working with her.

As is customary, we thought we’d ask Emily a few questions about herself so you can find out a little more about her:

Storm: What are your hobbies and interests outside work?

Emily: Outside of work you’ll find me (or attempt to find me) getting lost in nature, tramping through woodlands or across beaches looking for wildlife. I also find time for city life, I’ve fallen in love with the creative spirit of my hometown, Bristol. There’s always a gig, an exhibition or an event on to inspire and entertain, and now I can’t wait to find out what Bath has to offer!

Storm: If you could have breakfast with anybody in the world (past or present), who would it be and why?

Emily: David Attenborough, to hear his stories and get some travel tips.

Storm: If you could go anywhere in the world on holiday. Where, what would you do and why?

Emily: Central America to dive in the Caribbean Sea, explore the cloud forests in Costa Rica and meet the sloths at the sloth sanctuary.

Storm: What’s your type of music?

Emily: I keep an open mind for music, I love rock, indie, jazz, electronic, folk, reggae, hip hop, dance, a bit of pop… depends on the weather, the mood and the time of day. I love going to Glastonbury.

]]>https://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/blog/announcements/welcome-emily/feed/0The return of BathCamphttps://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/blog/announcements/the-return-of-bathcamp/
https://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/blog/announcements/the-return-of-bathcamp/#respondThu, 07 Jan 2016 14:22:57 +0000https://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/?p=3429 Read More »]]>It’s been quite some time since the last BathCamp, but our very own Paul Leader is taking the reigns and getting things back up and running in 2016!

There are going to be a few changes to revitalise the format and make it a little more sustainable.

Meetup: You can keep up to date with updates on the new Meetup group (http://www.meetup.com/BathCamp) . We hope this will make it easier for people to get involved. If you have an idea for a theme, a talk you’d like to give, or one you’d like someone else to give, please start a discussion on Meetup.

Venue: We will be at The Guild Coworking space, not the Innovation Centre. This is a bit of an experiment, but we hope this will make for more interaction, with a less “lecture room” atmosphere. Feedback welcome. Space is a little more limited, so please RSVP quickly.

Sponsors: Storm are sponsoring the venue and the drinks. We’re looking for other local firms to split the cost, so if you are interesting in helping out please get in contact.

Schedule: From now on, BathCamp will be happening every two months on the last Thursday of the Month, except in February when we sync up with the Bath Digital Festival.

The first evening will be on 18th February at the The Guild Coworking space. We’re keeping it light, with an evening all about tech that entertains, whatever the context, whether it’s music, video, games or animatronic dinosaurs… So far we have two confirmed speakers. If you have an idea for a talk or demo that fits the theme (no matter how loosely), please let us know.

This is an exciting opportunity to join an award winning digital product development team, voted Best Place to Work 2015, based in the beautiful city of Bath.

If bringing digital products to life is your passion and if working with some amazing startups from around the world excites you, then this may be the role for you.

We’re looking for a talented user interface designer to join our team. Our ideal candidate would be a gifted creative with experience crafting interfaces for web sites and applications. They will have a strong appreciation of the importance of design in user experience, be a master of their design tools of choice, and be adept at creating wireframes and style guides for our development teams to work from.

As a UI designer, you’ll work closely with our clients to help them formulate entirely new graphical personalities for their projects – and then bring them to life in flat file format. You’ll also be expected to keep abreast of the latest trends in web and application design, and help inform and educate our client base.

You must:

Have past experience as a UI designer (or as a web designer with reasonable UI experience)

Be able to meet with a client and assess their creative needs before creating flat file designs based on a combination of wireframes and input from the client/ wider team

Be able to design a marketing website (see some of the projects above for examples)

Be quick to grasp concepts. We work with an eclectic mix of startup and established businesses from a variety of backgrounds and industries. Being able to quickly understand and appreciate a client’s needs is critical

Have excellent written and spoken English

Be confident in your ability to speak directly with clients.

Desirable:

An appreciation of web front end coding languages (HTML & CSS) would be advantageous, but not necessary

Past experience designing / creating wireframes and style guides

Past experience designing UI for complex web applications would be advantageous, but not necessary.

Perks:

Highly competitive salary

4.5 day week (for a full salary) – we don’t work Friday afternoons

Unlimited holiday policy

A MacBook pro, cinema display and an assortment of other Apple goodies to work from

Flexible working

Opportunities to attend relevant events and conferences, as well as other training

Annual company team holiday (no work, just fun)

A variety of team social events

We were voted Best Place to Work in Bath 2015 at the recent Bath Business Awards.

Please send a CV, covering letter and portfolio of past work to cv@stormconsultancy.co.uk to apply. Your portfolio may include images or links, but in either case must clearly indicate your individual level of input to the work you present.

Please note, this job role is based at our offices in central Bath. As such, we’re not accepting applications for remote working.

Categorically no agencies / recruiters.

]]>https://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/blog/announcements/ui-designer-wanted-to-join-our-team/feed/0Setting a default image when using Cloudinary and CarrierWave in Railshttps://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/blog/development/tips-tricks/setting-a-default-image-when-using-cloudinary-and-carrierwave-in-rails/
https://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/blog/development/tips-tricks/setting-a-default-image-when-using-cloudinary-and-carrierwave-in-rails/#respondThu, 19 Nov 2015 12:06:24 +0000https://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/?p=3369 Read More »]]>Cloudinary lets you specify a default_image parameter when using the cl_image_tag, along with all of your transformations, to provide a fallback image if one has not been uploaded. If, however, you are using CarrierWave, you’ll likely want to define your transformations and the fallback image just once in your Uploader class.

Web Developer

This is an exciting opportunity to join an award winning digital product development team, voted Best Place to Work 2015, based in the beautiful city of Bath.

If bringing digital products to life is your passion and if working with some amazing startups from around the world excites you, then this may be the role for you.

We’re looking for a developer to join our Ruby on Rails team. Whilst our ideal candidate would have good RoR experience, we’re quite happy to consider candidates who have a strong background in other web based MVC frameworks such as Symfony or ASP .NET MVC.

As a Rails developer, you’ll be expected to both support and maintain existing client web applications, as well as develop brand new web applications alongside other senior developers. You’ll be expected to work across front and back end code and as such knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript is required.

Be quick to grasp concepts. We work with an eclectic mix of startup and established businesses from a variety of backgrounds and industries. Being able to quickly understand and appreciate a client’s needs is critical.

University degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related subject

Perks:

Highly competitive salary

4.5 day week (for a full salary) – we don’t work Friday afternoons

Unlimited holiday policy

A MacBook pro, cinema display and an assortment of other Apple goodies to work from

Flexible working

Opportunities to attend relevant events and conferences, as well as other training

Annual company team holiday (no work, just fun)

A variety of team social events

We were voted Best Place to Work in Bath 2015 at the recent Bath Business Awards.

Please send a CV and covering letter to cv@stormconsultancy.co.uk to apply.

Please note, this job role is based at our offices in central Bath. As such, we’re not accepting applications for remote working.

*** UPDATE 23rd NOV 2015 – AS THE CLOSING DATE HAS PASSED, WE ARE NO LONGER ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS ***Categorically no agencies / recruiters.

]]>https://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/blog/announcements/web-developers-wanted-to-join-our-team/feed/0Automatically restart struggling Heroku dynos using LogEntrieshttps://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/blog/development/ruby-on-rails/automatically-restart-struggling-heroku-dynos-using-logentries/
https://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/blog/development/ruby-on-rails/automatically-restart-struggling-heroku-dynos-using-logentries/#respondMon, 14 Sep 2015 15:54:22 +0000https://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/?p=3342 Read More »]]>We have a Rails app hosted on Heroku which periodically develops a memory leak, pushing it well over Heroku’s per-dyno memory quote and slowing everything down as it hits swap. The issue is intermittent, random, and only happens every few days but it’s easy enough to deal with, just restart the dynos. However it has a habit of happening at night or weekends (the site is used entirely in the US), which makes it difficult to deal with out of hours.

While we are making efforts to find the cause of the leak, our primary concern is to make sure the site remains usable. To that end, I’ve put together a little something to restart the web dynos automatically, even when it’s the middle of the night for us.

We use the LogEntries service, available as a free plugin for Heroku apps, to monitor our applications. LogEntries tails the logs and triggers alerts based on configurable conditions. It can detect all the Heroku platform errors such as the one we are interested in “R14 Memory quote exceeded”, and send an email, slack notification, or poke a webhook. It seemed logical to use LogEntries to restart the dynos when they got into trouble.

Restarting the Dynos

To restart our web dynos we create an ActiveJob task, which uses the Heroku Platform API (Ruby gem) to fetch the list of dynos, filter them down to just the running web instances (we’ve never had a problem with the workers), and restart each one in turn.

You can put this in any controller you think is appropriate, and setup the routes however you like. It expects a parameter of ‘key’ that matches whatever you set the environment variable RESTART_WEBHOOK_KEY to (I suggest generating a GUID using the SecureRandom library)

With the controller action in place you can set the webhook action in LogEntries to point to http://example.com/foo/restart_web_dynos?key=somejibberish.

Now, whenever LogEntries detects the memory quota issue it will call the webhook, which will schedule the job, which restarts the dynos. You could extend this to other events or monitoring services easily enough.

Caveat

Obviously this relies on at least one dyno still being functional. We tend to find that while the app slows down when it hits the quota it doesn’t actually stop, so this approach is ok. However if you have dynos that stop responding entirely you will need to host this code separately.

Having picked up a 1st in his initial year studying Materials Science and Engineering at Imperial College London – Tristan is spending the summer working alongside our MD, David, and Project/Ops Manager, Alice, on a project to look at the cultural and commercial impact of different styles of project management across small, highly skilled development teams.

As is customary, we thought we’d ask Tristan a few questions about himself so you can find out a little more about him:

Storm: What are your hobbies and interests outside work?

Tristan: I’m a massive foodie, which is great because the food scene in Bath is about as good as it gets outside of London. Food aside, I’m a big fan of good design and love it when I can integrate that into daily life. When it comes to de-stressing, I love getting out on my bike or hitting some squash balls round a court, which is great with a busy schedule.

Storm: If you could have breakfast with anybody in the world (past or present), who would it be and why?

Tristan: Elon Musk, the guy behind SpaceX and Tesla. I mean, talk about ambition – I think he’d be great to bounce ideas back and forth with. More than anything it would be interesting to get insight into the brains of a man who is attempting to make such a difference to the world we live in. Could we be cheeky and push it to brunch?

Storm: You’re currently reading Materials Science and Engineering as your degree. Why the summer placement at a tech firm?

Tristan: The course is really diverse, so I’ve got a lot of options when I graduate – I’m not sure if there’s a single job which incorporates quantum physics and hip implant design. For me, what is more important is that I end up working for a small company where my work makes a tangible impact. Given the booming nature of the tech sector, especially where I’m at Uni in London, it seems a natural fit to build experience at Storm.

Storm: How much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?

Tristan: That depends if a wood chuck would chuck wood. What is a wood chuck anyway?

Storm: What is your favourite piece of hardware or software that you’ve played with in the last 12 months and why?

Tristan: I find the Citymapper app totally invaluable when living in London – if I’m in a hurry it can be a real lifesaver, and the design is super intuitive. Other than that, the Yoyo app is a convenient mobile payment system, which really jumped ahead of Apple Pay – I just hope Apple doesn’t erode it’s user base too much. Again, the design of the user interface is on point – an important factor given the limited size of phone screens.

Alice has just joined our team here at Storm as our new project manager and we’re all thrilled to have her on board. We thought we’d take a brief opportunity to introduce you to Alice, so we asked her a few questions:

Storm: What are your hobbies and interests outside work?

Alice: I love to take pictures, I do quite a lot of running, I also enjoy a variety of music and going to gigs, finally good food and of course drinking good wine.

Storm: At interview you said you were like an exciting lion – tell us more!

Alice: I still can’t believe I said that in an interview! The nerves must of got the better of my brain.
I love lions because they are such beautiful animals and they are also loyal and look after their ‘pack’. I’ve no idea why I was an exciting lion!

Storm: You’ve recently been travelling. Are there any highlights you’d like to share?

Alice: So many to choose from! There were some beautiful beaches, our wonderful camper van, lots of different animals, all the surfing spots… I think that Western Australia was the big highlight, mainly because it was just so beautiful. Oh and getting engaged, that was just wonderful!